Jordan named new top ranger

Clayton Jordan is the new Chief Ranger for Resource and Visitor Protection at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

“I am honored and excited for the opportunity to join the team at the Smokies,” said newly appointed Chief Ranger Jordan. “The park has an incredible staff with a great reputation for accomplishing so much every year to protect this world class park and to provide a safe, enjoyable experience for the millions of visitors who come to experience it.”

Jordan comes to this position most recently from Gulf Islands National Seashore, Fla.-Miss., where he served as the chief ranger since November 2006. He also played a vital role in the unified command of the recent Mississippi Canyon oil spill response along the Mississippi-Alabama-Florida coast. He was the U.S. Department of Interior’s second-in-command to the joint federal, state and private effort, as well as being a point person to NPS Director Jon Jarvis during this effort.

Reading Room

Like some other readers I know, my taste in books these last 20 years or so has shifted from fiction to non-fiction, especially history, biography, and literary studies. I still follow certain novelists — Anne Tyler, Pat Conroy, James Lee Burke, and others — and still review novels for this paper, but find that works of fiction simply don’t appeal as much as when I was in my twenties and thirties, when I read stacks of novels and poetry.